


The Alien in the Office

by themindrobber



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Mary Sue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 03:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13115439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themindrobber/pseuds/themindrobber
Summary: When there's a stranded alien from many galaxies away in your stationery cupboard, you can be excused for skiving off work for an afternoon.





	The Alien in the Office

**Author's Note:**

> Who hasn't daydreamed about the TARDIS whisking them away from their boring workday?
> 
> The Amy in this story is not Amy Pond, but I go by the Russell T Davies theory of names and by the time I thought about the potential confusion she was already Amy. I tried, but she wouldn't let me change her name.

Sometimes work is boring. Sometimes work is very boring. Sometimes however, there is just no work at all.

Amy sat at her desk in Cardiff, as bored as someone who had sat at her desk for five straight hours with nothing to do but lunch, which had already passed. She worked in a call centre, and nobody was calling. If she could have anything right now, Amy would choose to time travel to 5pm, skip the next three hours, and arrive at the end of her work day.

She looked around the office. It was empty, as you’d expect of an office in which there was no work to do.

Amy heard a wheezing, groaning sound. It’s a sound unlike any other sound, and instead of trying to find out what was making the sound, Amy sat, transfixed by the wonder and terror it somehow brought in her.

The air in front of her began to change. It fizzed and buzzed, as the ether became less ethereal, became almost solid, became… solid.

Amy was staring at a wall. There were round things on the wall. A blue light on the outside, a red one on the inside. Sort of like a bullseye. This was absurd, walls don’t just materialise in front of your face. She pinched herself. Ow, OK so it’s not a dream.

“Not here, come on Clara, it’s just some office”, came a voice from behind her, a Scottish accent.

“Coming”, said the other voice, a woman’s, northern and friendly, with just a hint of bossiness.

Amy swivelled the chair around. She was inside a room, if you could call it a room, it was more like a cathedral. Stairs led down to where the voice had come from. The man, grey hair, attack eyebrows, and an inexplicable dress sense, was twiddling with buttons on the central console.

“Clara, come on, or I’ll leave you in this office”

“I’m coming!”, said the other voice, as the woman behind it burst through the doors.

The Scottish man pulled down a lever on the console, the wheezing, groaning sound started again, and the room seemed to move. There was no physical sensation of moving, but Amy had the distinct sense that they’d moved. She was so distracted by that thought that she hadn’t noticed the Scottish man looking in her direction.

“Who are you?”

Amy jumped. She hadn’t thought about introducing herself, “Erm, I’m Amy.” This didn’t produce any response from either the man or the woman.

“Not your name, why are you here, who are you working for?” he said, “Is it the Great Intelligence, the Zygon Rebellion, are you some sort of shapeshifter?”

None of this made any sense to Amy. “I’m a temp, I work in a call centre. I was there. Now I’m here.” She thought that just about covered it.

“I used to have a temp around here”, said the Scottish man, a hint of nostalgia in his voice.

“Never mind that”, said Amy, emboldened. “Who are you two?”

“I’m Clara, this is the Doctor, don’t mind his lack of social skills,” said the woman, Clara.

“And where am I?”

“I’ll handle that” said the Doctor, “This is the TARDIS, which stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It’s a spaceship, and it can time travel, I’m a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous, I’m over 2,000 years old, and at the moment I’m responding to a telepathic distress call from a creature called a Sensorite. Clear?”

“What’s a Sensorite?” asked Amy

“Good question, it’s a telepathic creature, very empathic, peaceful, and somehow it’s fallen through a rift in time. I thought it was in your office, but clearly I was wrong, which frankly, doesn’t happen very often”

“It’s an alien?” asked Amy

“Yes”

“Are you an alien?”

“Also yes”

Amy turned to Clara, “You too?”

“Nope, I’m as human as they come. Well maybe not the most human, but I’m definitely mostly human still”

“Clara is largely here to prevent me getting punched in the face, which happens a lot of the time when she’s not here”, said the Doctor.

Clara smiled, “It’s a tough job.”

There was a beeping coming from the console. The Doctor swivelled, and sped off to look at it.

“Are you OK?” said Clara.

Amy wasn’t sure, but she knew she was British, “Yeah, I’m fine”

“You sure?”

“I’m not sure how I got here”

“Doctor, how did, what’s your name by the way…”

“Amy”

“How did Amy get here?” asked Clara.

“My current theory is that the TARDIS accidently materialised around her whilst landing in that office. Strange thing, temps materialising in here, must be the watercooler I keep downstairs”

Suddenly it all made sense. Amy had been sitting in the office, when this spaceship, this time machine, this TARDIS, had materialised around her, including her chair, and taken her off to wherever she was now. That would have made no sense at all half an hour ago, but now…

The Doctor spun the monitor on the console around. “Clara, we’re going back, it’s definitely in that office, you must have just not looked hard enough”

“I’m an excellent looker, your TARDIS is wrong”

“She didn’t mean that, apologise to her”

“TARDIS, I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry”

A low rumble emitted from the console area.

“Good”, said the Doctor, “Now back we go”, he flipped the fast return switch.

With that familiar, groaning, wheezing sound, the TARDIS landed back in Amy’s office.

“Amy, I need your help here”, said the Doctor “Where might a frightened alien creature that has just fallen through a rift in time have hid around here?”

“I dunno, the toilets, the meeting rooms, I’m pretty much the only person in here today, and I haven’t seen it”

“OK, so we split up. Amy: ground floor, Clara: middle floor, I’ll take the top floor and the roof”

“Doctor, you won’t be able to get there without a key”

The Doctor had already gone, Clara turned to Amy, “Don’t worry, he’s got a thing for that.”

Amy wandered around her workplace, seeing it with new eyes. Behind any corner could be an alien from beyond her imagination.

As she found, behind the corner of a supply cupboard, hiding amongst the stationary, was a lost and stranded Sensorite.

“Doctor”, shouted Amy, “I’ve found your Senso–“

“–rite, they’re called Sensorites, and this guy’s a long way away from home and scared. I just need to try to persuade him I’m not here to hurt him…“, as he said this, the Sensorite cowered away “… and

I’ll have him back to the Sense-Sphere in no time.”

“Yeah, I think maybe you shouldn’t have said the word ‘hurt’”, said Clara, and the Sensorite further retreating back into the cupboard.

Amy was watching this all with some disbelief.

_Why do they keep talking about hurting me?_

She jumped. “They’re just trying to say that they’re friends, we’re friends.”

The Doctor looked at her, puzzled, “What did you just hear there?”

“The Sensorite, he just asked why you keep talking about hurting you. Didn’t you hear that?”

“Telepathy”, the Doctor said, tapping the side of his head, “I used to know someone who had a real skill for it, you obviously do too.”

“He was talking inside my head”

_Yes, and I’m grateful you can hear me. Are you actually human?_

“I’m human, Amy replied, “She is too, and the Doctor’s a–“

“–Time Lord, not that it matters right now,” said the Doctor.

_There was a Time Lord on our planet many years ago, humans too._

“He says he’s met a Time Lord before”, said Amy.

“That was me”, said the Doctor, “I had a different face then.”

The Sensorite nodded at the Doctor, and began to follow him back to the TARDIS.

_Tell him that I live in the year 33,764, and on the North half of the Sense-Sphere._

“Doctor–“Amy began.

“I know, North half of the Sense-Sphere, in the 338th century?”

“33,764”

“Excellent”, and the Doctor disappeared with the Sensorite back into the TARDIS. With that now familiar, wheezing, groaning sound, the TARDIS took off.

“All done”, said the Doctor, walking down the stairs.

“Show off”, said Clara.

“How did you do that?”, asked Amy.

“Told you, time machine”, said the Doctor. “It’s not usually this precise though, well done old girl.”

With that, the Doctor strode off towards the TARDIS. “Wait”, said Amy, “After all that, you’ve told me you’re an alien who can time travel, you’ve rescued another alien from the stationary cupboard, and you’re just going to leave me here?”

“Yep”, said the Doctor.

“One trip, that’s all I want”

Clara squeezed the Doctor’s arm, “Come on, you’d never have got that Sensorite home without her.”

“Hmm”, said the Doctor. “One trip, that’s it.”

“Understood”, said Amy

“Because I’ve had people who’ve turned one trip into one year–“

“One trip.”

“Well come on then.”

The Doctor beckoned her into the TARDIS. Who’s to know where that one trip took them? All anyone would ever know was that Amy mysteriously disappeared for three hours without ever swiping her key card to get out of the building.

“I don’t understand”, her boss said the next day, “I was in here half the afternoon, and couldn’t find hide nor hair of you.”

Amy smiled, “I guess I must have time travelled from two until five”

Her boss laughed, “Yeah, you wish.”


End file.
